Polish National Catholic Church

The Polish National Catholic Church (PNCC) is a Christian church based in the United States that was founded by Catholic Polish immigrants in Scranton, Pennsylvania in March 1897. The church split from the Roman Catholic church due to the Polish immigrants' desire for there to be a distinctly Polish church in America, as most of the American bishops were German or Irish and spoke very little to no Polish. The church had several theological differences from the mother church, and was therefore not in communion with it. For instance, since 1921, the PNCC allows for its clergy to marry. By the 2010s, the church had 26,000 members in five dioceses in the USA and Canada.